Warehouse Locations and Single-Step Transfers: General Information

In MYOB Advanced, you can create multiple locations in each warehouse and configure them to best fit the logistics that have been established in your company. You can reserve specific locations for sales, receipts, transfers, goods to be returned to vendors, and goods returned by customers. You can assign different pick priorities to locations, to empty certain locations more quickly while using others less frequently.

The functionality of multiple locations is available in the system if the Multiple Warehouse Locations feature is enabled on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form.

When you have multiple locations, you can register and process single-step transfers in the system, which involve moving items between locations of the same warehouse. (In MYOB Advanced, you can also register and process two-step transfers, which are transfers between locations in different warehouses; see Two-Step Transfers: General Information for details.)

Learning Objectives

In this chapter, you will do the following:

• Create and configure warehouse locations
• Perform a single-step transfer between warehouse locations
• View item availability by location

Applicable Scenarios

You create warehouse locations in either of the following cases:

• You are initially configuring inventory entities and settings.
• You reorganize the physical locations within an existing warehouse and would like to track items in these places.

You create single-step transfers when you need to move items from one location to another location within the same warehouse and to track this movement in the system.

Default Warehouse Location

If the Multiple Warehouse Locations feature is disabled on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form and a warehouse is created in the system on the Warehouses (IN204000) form, the system automatically creates a default location with the MAIN ID. Goods will be received to and issued from this location. The MAIN location has the following settings:

When you create a warehouse in the system where the Multiple Warehouse Locations feature is enabled on the Enable/Disable Features form, the default location is not created automatically, and you need to create at least one location for the warehouse.

Configuration of Warehouse Locations

You can define multiple locations for each warehouse on the Warehouses (IN204000) form. You can also view and change existing locations of the warehouse and their settings, including the default location.

You do the following to create and configure the locations of a particular warehouse in MYOB Advanced:

1. Optional: On the Segmented Keys (CS202000) form, you review the structure of the INLOCATION segmented key, which defines the identifiers for warehouse locations.

   If you want to create a hierarchy of locations (site, aisle, pallet, bin, and so forth), you can configure location identifiers that consist of multiple segments, with each segment denoting a specific level in this hierarchy. For example, suppose that you have three racks, each with four shelves, in a warehouse. A location identifier can have the Rn-SHm format, where Rn is the number of the rack (such as R2) and SHm is the number of the shelf in the rack (such as SH4).

   For more information about segmented keys, see Segmented Identifiers.

2. On the Locations tab of the Warehouses form, you add the needed locations to the table and specify the settings of each.
   Note: To create a similar configuration of locations in multiple warehouses, you can export the location table of one of these warehouses to an Excel file and then import the settings from the file to another warehouse, changing the settings as needed. For details on importing the settings from an Excel file, see Integration with Excel.
3. Optional: In the boxes above the table of locations, you select the following default locations for inventory operations (which simplify data entry on purchase receipts and sales orders):
   • Receiving Location: The default receiving location for stock items in the warehouse.
   • Shipping Location: The default shipping location for the warehouse.
   • RMA Location: The location used for all operations involving return merchandise authorization (RMA). The returned goods will be delivered to the location specified in this box, regardless of the warehouse location selected by default for the receipt of these goods.
   • Drop-Ship Location: The location used for drop-ship orders and inventory issues that are automatically generated for drop-ship orders. This box is displayed only if the Drop Shipment feature is enabled on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form.
4. Optional: In the Location Entry box in the Summary area, you specify the option that indicates whether you want to allow users to add new locations on the fly when they are entering inventory documents. If an option that allows these additions is selected, user-added locations can be viewed (and edited, if needed) along with other locations on the Locations tab of the form.

Priorities of Warehouse Locations

If any inventory items with the same inventory ID in the system are stored in multiple locations of the same warehouse, the system has to find the appropriate warehouse location from which to issue the items when a user creates a shipment for a sales order. Thus, for each location, on the Locations tab of the Warehouses (IN204000) form, in the Pick Priority column, you can specify the pick priority. If the system finds multiple locations that have the item, the system selects the location with the highest pick priority.

For example, suppose that you store a dairy product that can be kept for one week. You purchase this dairy product every day and store it in two locations of the warehouse: A and B. In Location A, you store a variant of the dairy product that can be kept from five to seven days. In Location B, you store a variant of the dairy product that can be kept from two to four days. You can assign the highest pick priority to Location B so that dairy products with an earlier expiration date are shipped first.

If for the majority of stock items, you specify a warehouse location in the Default Issue From box on the General tab of the Stock Items (IN202500) form for an item, you can include this location in search for appropriate locations by selecting the Use Item Default Location for Picking check box on the Locations tab of the Warehouses form.

When this check box is selected, the system treats the location specified in the Default Issue From box as having a higher priority than the location with the highest possible pick priority. That is, the system searches for locations in the following order until it finds a match:

1. The warehouse location specified for the item in the Default Issue From box.
2. The warehouse location with the highest pick priority specified on the Locations tab of the Warehouses form. (The value 1 indicates the highest priority, 2 the next highest, and so forth to the lowest priority; 0 means that the pick priority is not defined.)

Single-Step Transfers

Your organization can use single-step inventory transfers to record stock item movements between locations within the same warehouse. For a single-step transfer, you should specify the following information on the Transfers (IN304000) form:

• The source warehouse (in the Warehouse box).
• The destination warehouse (in the To Warehouse box). For a single-step transfer, select the same warehouse as the source warehouse.
• Transaction details of the stock item to be moved: the source location, the destination location, inventory ID, UOM, and quantity.

You can release a particular inventory transfer by clicking Release on the More menu of the Transfers form. Also, you can release multiple transfers at the same time by using the Release IN Documents (IN501000) form. No GL transactions are generated for a single-step transfer that records item movement from one location to another within the same warehouse.

When a transfer performed between locations within the same warehouse is released, the system updates the allocations and the availability data for the transferred items but does not change the item costs.